Photograph
by Experimental
Summary: The hope of a mother. The pride of a father. The guilt of a son . . . These things transcend the impermanence of life. And remind us of it, like a photograph.
1. 1911

Author's note: Yet _another_ sidestory to a work in progress, "Forbidden Colors," based on my own theories about chapter 31 of volume 9 of the manga. 

* * *

Photograph 

Yuichi ignored the man standing outside the door for as long as possible before it would appear impolite. As the caretaker of the estate since his sister's health took a sharp decline, he took care to carry out his responsibilities with adult sense. However, he was somewhat relieved to see his discomfort mirrored in his new wife's face as she stepped out of the parlor to see what had caused the small commotion among the help. The rain came down in sheets, drumming on the roof and turning the landscape of the suburban Tokyo streets a dim gray though it was the middle of the afternoon. He could not imagine why anyone would want to be out on a day like this, so it was with a touch of suspicion that he now answered the door to the man whom the maid had greeted just a moment before. 

The man stood on the stoop holding an umbrella over his head and wearing a wool suit in the Western style, all three pieces and overcoat the same somber gray as the sky. The highly polished black of his shoes and his pale complexion stood out in a sharp contrast. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and the cold and wet did not seem to affect him in the least, almost as though it passed around him, whereas just a draft caused Yuichi to shiver slightly. He had a long face and a strong, narrow chin. Yuichi supposed his mouth and nose were the kind that would be considered classic in their proportions and the way they fit the structure of his face—like a work of art, each feature part of a perfect whole. And as the stranger stood unmoved, it seemed as though someone had left a statue of an old god on the doorstep. He was, in short, overwhelming, and Yuichi felt with some resentment like a child next to him. That his eyes were concealed by the shadow of his hat was also cause for discomfort and suspicion, for it left one with the feeling he wished to hide something terrible. 

"I came to see Tsuzuki Mariko." 

The man's voice was low and resonated with the patience of ages that one might expect from a priest. It was as ambiguous to Yuichi as his age. And Yuichi knew he would not be able to refuse the request. Still— 

"What do you want with my sister?" he asked, aware that the impudent tone of his own voice belied his youth. "Who are you?" 

A smile touched the stranger's lips. 

"An old friend." 

Yuichi studied the beautiful face more closely, trying to place it. There was something strangely familiar about it. As if sensing his train of thought, the man asked, "May I come in?" noting the rain, and Yuichi reluctantly stepped back to let him through. He gestured in the direction of his sister's bedroom. "The doctor is with her now," he told the stranger, who nodded his acknowledgement as he handed his overcoat and umbrella to the maids, who had now doubled to two. He removed his hat. His dark brown hair was slick with pomade, the subtle fragrance of which penetrated the musty scent of rain in the foyer, and looked as soft and vibrant as silk so that even Yuichi felt an urge to touch it and see if his eyes did not deceive him. The stranger kept his eyes hidden from them with smoked glasses, as though afraid they would catch something private in them. Ignoring Yuichi's hint to wait, he made his way to the bedroom. 

"What a peculiar person. Coming out on a day like this, dressed like that . . ." 

"He's obviously got money. He can do whatever he pleases." 

"But it's like something an angel of death might do, isn't it?" 

"You don't suppose—" 

"Enough," Yuichi reprimanded the maids. As queer as the stranger was, he did not wish to insult him further. 

The doctor was on his way out when the man entered the bedroom. A question flashed across his bespectacled face; he glanced around for Yuichi. "It's consumption," he whispered to the stranger with a slight sigh when he did not see the young man, as though afraid the woman who lay still in the futon in the middle of the room would hear. "A rather progressed stage. You must let her rest." His eyes put more bluntly what his words did not: that he did not wish the man to see his patient. Even he felt somehow threatened by the stranger. 

"She would _want_ to see me," the stranger insisted solemnly, and the doctor found he could not argue. He slid the door quietly closed behind him. 

Silence descended in the already quiet house with it. The hush of the wind blowing raindrops against the side of the house wrapped the room in a blanket of warm gray, and as the water dripping down the windowpanes threw flowing shadows on the floor it almost seemed the world outside was melting. He removed his dark glasses and slipped them into his breast pocket. He knelt down by the woman who occupied the futon in the center of the room and sat at her right hand. The quilt had been arranged meticulously, the creases smoothed out and not renewed by any movement of the woman's. As she rested, as she probably had for much of the day, her brows seemed slightly knotted with some discomfort. Her personality resisted being bed-ridden. 

He was surprised by how different she looked, and by how much remained the same. Her black hair that had been glossy when he would so often run his fingers through it now seemed faded, and she looked older than he remembered, older than she was. Her cheeks and lips were pale and dry, and when he lifted her hand and placed it in his he was surprised by the frailty of it. The skin remained firm and warm, however, and with even that slightest shift, like that which stirs up clouds of sand from the sea floor, the familiar perfume of spring flowers she would often rub into the dip behind her jaw surrounded him. Her eyes blinked slowly open at his touch, and he was pleased to see that her eyes still held the spirit of the girl he had fallen in love with twelve years before. 

She recognized his mouth first, the ambiguous smile his full lips formed so perfectly. It was his eyes that confirmed his identity: the crimson color like the deepest of cut amethyst, more precious to her than anything, which had eluded her for so long, and yet in another manifestation she had gazed on fondly every day. (He wondered if, too, she noticed they had not changed a bit since the last time she saw him.) Her eyes widened in surprise, but there was satisfaction behind them as well, as if she had known all along that he would be coming and no one had believed her. 

"You!" she said with a quiet awe. Her voice sounded as fresh as it did then. She cracked a smile that warmed his heart and some color returned to her face. "I thought you were dead." 

"I was," he told her gently, "for a while." 

They said nothing for a long time, each simply content to stare at the other's face. She did not need to say she missed him. It was evident in her eyes, which overflowed with a love that had never grown weaker despite the time and distance that stood against it, like a violet crocus standing determined on its weak stem though it was surrounded by snow. She felt any words to express it would be a lie. 

"I'm sorry Asato isn't here to see you," she said instead. "He's well, of course: he's just always late home from school." 

"Asato." 

The man turned the name over inside his mind. 

She nodded slowly. "He grows up so fast: he looks more and more like you each year. It's been my greatest comfort all these years to see you in his eyes. I wish you could see him." 

"I wish I could," he said, but something in his tone told her it was not meant to be. 

She granted his wish anyway. She gestured weakly for a book that sat on the table a short distance from her bed and he picked it up. It was a copy of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. A harder piece of paper stood out from the pages, and he held it reverently between the tips of his fingers. It was a photograph of her and a boy of ten or eleven. Her proud beauty reminded him of another photo they had taken together when their short relationship had just begun. But it was the boy to whom his eyes were drawn. He stood straight next to her chair in his _gakuran_, fulfilling his duty as man of the house in his father's absence, but his expression was carefree beneath his cap. Though the picture was colorless, something in the shade of sepia or the reflection in the lenses told him without any doubt the boy's eyes were the same color as his own. The man felt some new and powerful emotion rise within him, but he could not name it. "He's beautiful," he told Mariko. 

She smiled. "He is beautiful. And he's so smart, too." Suddenly she seemed in a rush to tell him everything about the boy, all the stories and observations that had built up over the years crowding her mouth to be released in what short time she was allotted. "He reads everything he can get his hands on, you know. When the doctor told me I was to stay in bed, he kept me company and read me the letters that came, and the newspaper so that I wouldn't be left out. There are sad things happening around us these days and often it seems he is my pillar of strength. . . . But I hear of all the wonders of the world through him as well. Lately everything has been Sherlock Holmes. He says he wants to be a detective when he grows up, just like in the books, and solve people's problems. Isn't that considerate? He has such a big heart, sometimes I wonder how I came to be so blessed." A touch of sadness made her smile waver. "He . . . doesn't have many friends, though. He says it's because he's . . . different from the other boys." 

The man bowed his head in understanding. "That's my fault. He takes after me too much." 

"Please, don't say that. You should never regret something like that. The reason I love him so much is that he reminds me constantly of you." 

He was touched by her sincerity, though he thought she had misunderstood him. It was worry that had crossed his mind, worry for the boy's well being. He knew not everyone was as openhearted as Mariko—in the world of the living or the dead. 

"Forgive me, Mariko. I didn't mean for it to sound like that. . . ." 

"I know," she said, contrite. "You would be so proud of him, I know it, if you could just see him." 

"I am." 

"Do you know what he told me when they said I was . . ." She paused uncertainly as though some movement in the corner of her eye had distracted her. When she spoke again her voice was low, barely above a whisper. "My brother kept insisting I would get better, like I was a child and couldn't understand what the doctor told me was happening to my own body. But Asato . . . He said, 'It's all right, Mother; it's all right. Everything dies, when it's their time, and we have to accept it or we can never be happy. I'm not afraid.' And I was comforted instantly by his bravery and the truth of his words. I envy him for that. If my child can have such strength then shouldn't I?" 

Her voice faltered then and she closed her eyes. Her brows furrowed again, and as he watched he saw for the first time tears squeezing out from under her eyelashes. 

"Mariko . . ." 

"I'm afraid." 

She confided this in him, her voice just barely uttering the words her lips formed, like it was a shameful secret no one else was allowed to see—a weakness of character. She could never know how much he envied her that ability she took for granted, even disliked: the ability to release her emotions, and shed tears. Even to express her fears honestly . . . If only he could do half as much, then she would know without uncertainty how much he was affected by their parting. But it was not only forbidden, it was not within his capacity. He felt he could taste the warmth and saltiness of her tears; and he felt that the emptiness, like her disease, would eat him up from the inside no matter how many she shed. 

He wanted to stay her doubts. There's nothing to be afraid of, he wanted so much to say. I would intercede on your behalf if it came to that. I would do anything. Of course, he knew he could not tell her this. Their past relationship, he feared, might have been enough to complicate her death, and it would only be cruel to complicate it further just because he was unable to feel remorse. 

"There's no need to be," he said instead. He felt it was safe to say that much. 

"It's not just for myself," she clarified after a moment when she realized his concern was for her. "I'm afraid of what will happen to Asato when I'm gone. My brother won't take care of him: he doesn't have the patience, and besides he thinks like everyone else, that Asato is a disgrace. He won't have anyone else." 

Her fingers were suddenly strong in his, and they gripped his hand with an urgency that, for a moment at least, dammed the source of the tears that rolled down the sides of her face. "Everything I saved . . ." She swallowed. "Everything you gave me I still have. I want it all to go to Asato. It should be enough to get him through school. He could go to a good boarding school if someone with a good reputation . . ." 

"I can't, Mariko," he told her. 

"I just want to make sure Asato has somewhere to go. Please, if you can just promise me that one thing—" 

"I can't. It is not allowed." 

He bowed his head. He despised those words that felt so strongly in that moment, as when he had first left, like a betrayal she did not deserve. He had not wanted to speak them this afternoon, knowing it would probably be the last time he saw her—or at very least, the last time they would be able to speak. Somehow he had expected it would be easier. Now he understood the real reason for his visit, though it had never been either person's intention. It was to bear witness to the last will and testament of a mother to her child. 

And he was the one person who was powerless to do anything about it. 

Still, through the tears that welled up again, the desperation in her eyes captured his soul and refused to let go. She could not have expected him to return, this afternoon or ever, but on some instinctual level she had been prepared for this one chance to defend her child's future. "Please," she begged, appealing to what semblance of humanity existed within him. "You are all he'll have left." 

And he knew she was right, and that her pleas transcended even the authority of Enma Daioh: he could not deny them without denying himself. 

"Then I promise," he said. 

The eternity of his smile and his unwavering gaze seemed to convince her that he told the truth. She sighed and her features relaxed. "I must be getting sleepy," she observed suddenly in a disconnected fashion. "Will you stay a little longer?" 

"I must be returning," he said, his ambiguous smile remaining. 

"You're like a ghost: always drifting in and out so I can never tell if you were really here." Sadness marred her brow again, but with his promise sealed in her heart it did not seem to last, even as she said, "So . . . I may never see you again." 

"You may still," he said. "You just may not recognize me." 

"I would recognize you anywhere." 

An intimate smile drifted over her own lips, and a part of him hoped she would. 

The other knew it was impossible. 

He heard the rain hit his umbrella when he left the house, but he did not feel its dampness. The summer green of the trees was dark and glistening with it. The change of seasons, so regular and so fast: he resented them and envied them at the same time as they reminded him of the cycle of life and death that had been thrust into his hands. And that he had been denied. The laws that bound him had never felt so restricting, but this afternoon the living world had at least some effect on him. He felt, if only slightly, grief. Down one of these roads, the emperor lay on his own deathbed, but his life seemed to the man insignificant next to that of the young woman whom he had abandoned, now this afternoon, twice. People would mourn the passing of an age shortly, but they would eventually heal even if the idea seemed impossible. 

He wondered if he ever would. 

——— 

The great halls of the Castle of Candles sparkled with millions of flickering flames, filling every rich chamber like stars filled the night sky in the country. This impossible place, the gold-coffered ceilings and marble mosaic floors, unclouded by any smoke, which never saw the light of day, radiated with the heat of human lives. The moral and just and the corrupt and deceitful—all were reduced to one thing that remained, unquestionably, sacred. Out of all the millions there were two in particular that captured his attention. He knew instantly which they were, though they looked no different from any others, on instinct. 

They were a part of him. 

The one that had grown faint as of late flickered a few times and slowly died with not even a wisp of smoke to indicate its passing. Though it only represented a life he felt as if he had lost a piece of himself with it. Emptiness was all that was left in his heart, the aching emptiness like that which resulted from a fast, but he knew it could never be refilled. Not for the first time did he envy the mortals whose deaths he oversaw, and the emotions that were so precious to them. No real tears could ever be shed by his amethyst eyes. 

He withdrew from his waistcoat the sepia photograph Mariko had given him. Its edges had been bent since then, but he imagined traces of her scent remained on it, faint and pure, teasing him with glimpses as obscure as in a dream of when they were together. Her wide eyes, genuine beneath her white make-up, stared back at him with a slight smile of contentedness. He traced her image with his fingers, and he could feel her slender body familiar beneath the soft fabrics of her kimono. She was gone from him now forever, but this one thing would always remain: this image of her in this single moment, one day in spring, in 1911. 

He was not sure how long he had stood there before the two candles, staring at her picture. It was the familiar wavering voice of his servant that shook him from the past. 

"Hakushaku-sama. . . ?" 

"Yes? What is it, Watson? A summons from Enma, I suppose." 

He had come to look forward to some message from his lord with dread, and a masochistic sense of martyrdom, so he was surprised to find himself disappointed when Watson said, "N-no, sir. It's the appointment you made to see Chief Konoe from the Shokan Division. . . . You're late, sir. He's waiting for you in the dining room." 

"I see. I must have forgotten." He felt an ironic smile tug at the corners of his mouth. "Tell me, Watson, do you think tardiness is an inherited trait?" 

Taken aback by the abruptness of his question, Watson wrung his small hands nervously—although in fairness it was always difficult to judge what was his mood and what his personality. "I wouldn't know, sir. . . . Is it important?" 

"No," the man said, and added to himself, "But maybe." 

"Hakushaku-sama?" 

Without turning to face him, he dismissed Watson with a wave, and reassured him in the same gesture. He needed a moment alone to plan what he was going to say. The photograph seemed heavy in his hands, mirroring the weight of his obligation on his mind. I cannot, and will not, go back on my promise, he thought; even if it means my own damnation. But, Mariko, if you only knew how I intended to fulfill it—it's not what you hoped, but it is all I can do. I can only hope you would forgive me. . . . 

As he gazed at the boy in the picture, who stood so lovingly beside his mother's chair, he felt the same peculiar feeling rise inside him again. Pride did not quite describe it faithfully, nor did longing. It was an emotion no one could describe, because it was the most visceral of them all. It filled him at odd times with ecstatic joy, and excruciating pain at others. Perhaps it was something in the boy's confidence and good-humor that the artificial pose for the camera could not hide, or how the film had captured the soft textures of his skin and school uniform almost too realistically, that he felt he already knew the boy like he knew himself, even though he had never seen him in the flesh. Someday he would. A selfish part of him hoped it would be soon. 

This treasure—this miracle that did the impossible and broke his heart . . . It was all he had left. 

Tsuzuki Asato. 

His son. 


	2. 1899

Note: This isn't really a "chapter two," or even a sequel because they really are separate, but the premise is the same as in "Photograph" so I've put the two together. "Hello" by Evanescence convinced me to write a second part, so instead of a songfic some of the lines are taken from the lyrics. 

* * *

The school bell rings again. Class is over. Rainclouds gather overhead. Another storm is coming. It dims the world like a wool blanket that has been thrown over it, black-bellied, trapping the humidity. The upper branches of trees sway with a breeze that never reaches the ground. The upturned leaves dance a solemn rain dance. Their white undersides flash dully as they turn round and round with the joy a distant roll of thunder promises. 

The boy sat down on a wooden bench that had been placed in the school yard. He wore the black _gakuran_ and cap of a middle school student. He did not mind that the seat was damp as he drew his knees up to his chest with the intent to stay rooted to this spot through any weather. Everyone else had gone home long ago, afraid of getting wet. But he would have remained there with his thoughts until lightning forced him inside. He thought he had all the time in the world. The poor boy, the man thought. Has no one told you she's no longer breathing? 

The boy looked up at the man standing under the street lamp, who was in turn looking at him. The man wore a Western suit and glasses and stared at him as if the boy were already dead. Did he know the boy could see him? 

"Hello," said the boy. 

"Hello," said the man after a moment like a miming parrot. He deliberated over it as if the boy had spoken in another language. He hadn't planned on speaking at all. Was this what I was supposed to see? he wondered. But if that were the case, why? Ignoring him, the boy took a folded old photograph from the pocket of his uniform and the man was driven by his curiosity to peer at it from where he stood. It was a young married couple—a young woman in kimono patterned with crocuses and painted white face; a Japanese man in a frock coat who looked no older than himself except for the lines engraved into the skin around the eyes. He looked so tired. Is that how I'm destined to become? the man thought to himself. 

There was something familiar about that picture. No, on second thought it was not a wedding picture after all. The subjects did not sit like married couples. He knew the pose. There was no distance, no discomfort. They had been in love. 

"What do you want?" The boy's voice wavered. 

"Shouldn't you be heading home?" the man asked him. "You know your mother is dying, don't you?" 

"I know." 

He did not ask how the man knew. She had been dying of tuberculosis for a while. 

"Don't you think she would want you to be there with her?" 

The boy sighed. 

"You don't understand." When the man said nothing, he continued: "I can't stand the way they all look at me. My uncle and his wife hate me, like I did this—like it was my fault. Like it was _his_ fault. . . . My sister just smiles all the time, when she doesn't want to be smiling, she just wants to cry. I hear her at night, and she won't talk to me. And everyone lies and tells me everything will turn out fine. . . . I wish they would all just go away." 

He wiped the side of his face that was turned away from the man as though only to brush the hair out of his eyes. He clutched the photograph closer to his body as though it embarrassed him for the man to see. 

"I can't bear to see her like this," the boy said. "I can't." 

It was not a feeling to be rationalized, the fear to move one way or another that kept him rooted to this bench. The man smiled. It hurt to do so. But was it not the same fear that kept him standing under this street lamp, a mere observer, instead of taking hold of the boy's arm and forcing him home? Was it not the same feeling of indecision that had brought him to this point? His feet would not move him out from under this street lamp. 

"I know," the man said. 

And I can do nothing—just as I could do nothing then. 

A raindrop fell on the pavement, leaving a small, black polka dot. One fell on the photograph, blurring the strange, sepia eyes of the man in the frock coat. A few more hit the paper, pattering. The boy wiped them off in haste, putting the picture back inside his jacket. 

These two people who watched the rain come down beside one another were conscious that even then they remained alone. The force of the raindrops hitting the puddles left over from yesterday's rainfall made bubbles bounce to the surface and just as quickly disappear. The warm air was all that was left to tell of summer in this gray world. The man wondered, where did the cicadas go when it rained? 

——— 

"Why did you send me there?" the man in the glasses said. 

The figure sitting across from him in the dark was silent. "I wanted you to see," he said after a time. His words were carefully measured. 

"See what?" said the man. 

"What I've accomplished. What I've brought into that world, little though it is." The figure paused as though he were shaking his head. "You will have to forgive me: my motives were selfish." 

The man sat up. His new posture begged pardon for the insubordination he was about to speak. "You don't mean to tell me, sir, that King Enma did not order it. I cannot believe that." 

The figure's gaze on him seemed to harden. The blank holes in the otherwise featureless Jômon-style mask were incapable of holding the emotions of the man who wore it, nor did his pressed frock coat and white gloves make any movement that might indicate the nature of his reaction. "Why would you come to that conclusion?" he said simply. 

"Because you knew, as Enma does, that that boy's situation has certain similarities to my own. Why else would you force me to witness it if it were not a test?" 

"I regret that you took it that way, but you were merely my witness. Truly, anyone would have done." 

"But you sent _me_." The man, aware of the rising tone of his voice, took a deep breath. He clenched his fists in his lap, as though clenching those bitter things that became bottlenecked in his throat. "You sent me," he said, "knowing I could do nothing to help that boy's pain. It could only be excessively cruel for him. When he returns home and finds his mother has died while he was out avoiding her, thinking everything would be the same when he got there . . . While he was talking with me. . . ." He knew that she had already gone long before then, and that the boy would never have made it anyway, that he could never have known. He knew that he had done nothing more to stall the boy than the boy would have done already. But he knew he had done nothing less either. "When he finds her like that, the guilt will destroy him. How foolish he was not to return right away. That's what he will think. That somehow he betrayed her. What if I had arrived just one minute earlier? He will never stop asking himself that. 

"He will never forgive himself." 

The man lowered his head, resting his temples on his fingers. He hid like this from that eyeless gaze that did not waver from him. Why could it not torment someone else? He hated it. He hated the man in the mask, not least because he feared him. He feared the silence that made him unpredictable. And he could not escape the feeling the man in the mask resented him as well. 

"Tatsumi-san," the man in the mask said, "don't blame yourself." 

Tatsumi stood and pushed up his glasses. What would you know about it? he thought; you who aren't even and never was human. Who was never fallible. Was this outreaching of pity just a pathetic imitation of human compassion? Even if it was sincere, he did not want it. He did not need it. "Please. Don't try to fix me, sir," he said. "I'm not broken." 

The man in the mask was silent. 

Away from his gaze, in the dark halls of that castle, Tatsumi told himself this was true. It was a long time ago that it happened, long enough for any wound to heal. But the boy who sat alone on a bench with the picture of his parents, both unreachable, just as he was to Tatsumi, had been as his own reflection in a mirror. The image came to him again from out of the past: murder. A white kimono and black hair in disarray. Blood soaking the brocade in a wild pattern like the kind fashionable now in Tokyo. Blood soaking the tatami. His sister was wailing again and again, Mother! Mother! The sound stuck in his head like the incessant drone of insects, though outside it had been snowing. 

The image never changed. It was a still photograph that sat forever in a corner of his mind. Even in death it refused to stay buried in the shadows he had piled atop it. It refused to fade, or be torn up. It refused to let him forget that at that time too he was powerless. He had done nothing. 

But then, there was nothing he could have done. 

——— 

This time it was final. He could feel it with certainty. He could feel them departing from him, reluctantly but with no other choice and no hard feelings—slowly bleeding out from his memory, leaving him feeling weightless as he said good-bye to each of them, gratefully. Good-bye, sister. Good-bye, mother. Good-bye, all those I have hurt or burdened. Leave me in peace, even if you cannot forgive me. Even if I don't deserve it. Please, allow me that much. 

In the back of his consciousness, as though from far away he could hear the panicked voices. 

"Sensei, quickly! He's done it again!" 

"You turn your back on him for one minute . . . How long has he been like this?" 

Was he only dreaming this? He had the vague sensation of someone pressing something against his arm. Yet he could not be sure that it was his own body and not someone else's. It did not seem real. It hurt, and that was real, though he could not be sure if it was from the pressure. Stop, he wanted to tell them. This is what I want; can't you see that? I can't bear it anymore. 

"It will heal, right? It always does. Last time was slow, too, wasn't it?" 

The man let out a frustrated sigh. 

"It's no good. He's lost too much blood already." 

It was flowing like a spring from between the rocks in the mountains, in the summer when it glows red from the setting sun, out from under a piece of broken, mossy green glass. Had he really done that? He was so tired, he could not remember anymore. The roar of water was in his ears. Was it a downpour? The world outside the window had been white when he woke. It was falling down slowly, so slowly, like the tufts of cotton that evaded his hand and might never touch down on a breezy early-summer day. But it was the wrong time of year for that. 

It was snowing. . . . Had the year passed so quickly? 

Suddenly he knew he wasn't sleeping. He opened his eyes, what little he was able. The world outside the window was hazy and bright and gray, like ashes blowing away after the fire has died. It was no longer that summer day that he had longed to escape from, already almost a decade and a half ago. How could it have been so long ago? He had no concept of time in this place. He only knew that for too long he had awoken from one prison only to find himself in another. That school yard Eden or this room that smelled like medicine—neither was equipped with an exit. All his efforts only ran him in circles. Now that he had finally found the way out, he would not be denied it again. He was certain of that much. 

The man with the glasses was here looking down at him. He stood just as still as he had that day, though he had no street lamp to hold on to. The weak daylight was behind him, his face in shadow, but Tsuzuki knew it was he nonetheless. He had not changed. . . . The doctor and his assistants did not see the man as they muttered something about losing a pulse and silently mourned the last eight years. Let it stay that way, Tsuzuki thought. I've overstayed my welcome. I should have listened to you the first time. 

Take me away from them, he begged as he stared into the man's eyes. Far away. . . . 

He could not see the man's response. The light from the window was reflected dully off the rim of his glasses, snowflakes drifted across the lenses. But there was something behind them that was sympathetic. It was difficult for him to return Tsuzuki's gaze. Perhaps he did not want to deceive him. Or perhaps he was simply ashamed he could do nothing else. His shadow. His Kannon. . . . 

All that was left of yesterday. 

Tsuzuki turned to him and mouthed the words he should have said then: 

"Take me home." 

Was he able to see the man nod ever so slightly in that moment? The snow was already thick on the ground before they finally confirmed he was gone. 


End file.
